Why Godzillas Spines changed

I think Michael Dougherty liked the classic spines more, accepted that Godzilla's look changes from movie-to-movie and retconed the 2014 Godzilla with new spines.

Just to be clear, he has the 2019 spines in the flashback to 2014.

G. H. (Gman): "Just to be clear, he has the 2019 spines in the flashback to 2014."

I doubt the casual moviegoers will be aware of that. Only us fans pay attention to this sort of thing. 

Casual moviegoers aren't going to notice the spines are different at all from film-to-film.

I knew there was a reason everything looked wrong about that flashback, that is deeply frustrating. They had the 2014 model, why not use it for the 2014 scene?! As if the prequel comics didn't already have enough problems keeping with the canon, why undercut a deliberate attempt to fix a continuity error?

Gomi: Ninja Monster,
These prequel comics, canon or not, are really afterthoughts--Throwaway stories to help market the movie. I doubt the filmmakers were considering them while making their films.

I for one love it. We've never had an explanation for why Godzilla changes before, we don't really need one now.

 G.H. (Gman)

Yeah, I'll give you that one.

But, we had an explanation this time! I loved the grounded take the MonsterVerse had to Godzilla, it was finally what I'd always wished for. Using the 2019 design for a flashback just brings to mind all those times they reused shots from the Showa era to save on effects, it feels lazy. I expected better from Legendary.

Plenty of things get changed without explanation. They're called retcons. The bridge of the Enterprise changed significantly from Star Trek V to VI. Magneto's helmet looked different in each of the last four X-Men movies. Beast's and Mystique's make-up design from movie-to-movie as well. The Beastmaster's tiger, named Ruh, is a black tiger in the first movie, a striped bengal tiger in the second movie and a lion in the third movie.

Retcons happen for creative reasons and Dougherty felt it best to assume Godzilla always had those spines. I think it's great no explanation was given.

At the very least, the explanation is now out there.

The novelization also brought up the events of Aftershock and Awakening, and it's been made clear that even if not directly mentioned, the expanded media material is still being kept in mind.

Plus, it makes a lot of sense and could also explain his size increase.

An injury as severe as having all your dorsal plates destroyed is something that requires some major healing. Godzilla probably had to stay in one of the Hollow Earth's radiation pockets for the entirety of those 5 years, growing out his backspines as quickly as possible.

As a consequence of doing this, they grew out larger and presumably more durable, simultaneously allowing him to jumpstart his overall body growth. The backspines getting larger would also result in an improved ability to channel and store atomic energy, which neatly explains why his breath looks more focused and concentrated in Antarctica.

It's a very clever and elegant solution.

I think that between the events of 2014 and KOTM, he was already in the process of changing his dorsal plates, and the energy given to him when (SPOILERS) Serizawa died sped up and completed that process. For me, his spines looked more like the ones from '54 after the nuke scene compared to earlier in the film.

G. H. (Gman) and Gomi: Ninja Monster: Well, I don't see what's so wrong with giving an explanation to how the spines changed in the prequel comics. Provided it is a good reason and not some idiotic reason. Yeah, some fans can be rather...picky over that. I remember in the comic series Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters, fans got angry because it showed Godzilla seemingly getting his atomic breath only after he was nuked. Personally, I don't have an issue with that but some fans get angry over all sort of reasons. In this case, the spikes were blown off and now it re-grew...to a slightly different shape. That makes sense. I don't have an issue wth it.

I understand that after the comic, the plates grew back naturally, but did not grow healthy, but irregularly, like the crooked teeth.